The self-absorbed U.S. “commemoration” of 9/11 today was repulsive in the extreme. 3000 Americans died, yes, a great tragedy. But 9/11 was used to launch a war based on lies in which over 1 million Iraqis have died and 4 million have been displaced – who knows how many wounded? No mention of that in all the self-absorption to which this date has been given over. And the effect of 911 and its uses has continued to Libya today in the Bush/Obama wars.

What kind of morality and culture is that? And the “upscale” outlets like NPR are just about the worst on this matter. AM talk radio cannot even come close. And at least the FM rock stations provide a refuge from the mawkishness

9/11 was barely a scratch compared to the millions killed in America’s imperial wars. The skies were dark on that September day with untold numbers of chickens coming home to roost.

Is the enemy that attacked the WTC on 9/11 stateless? I am no advocate of the idea that there was a secret demolition of the WTC – which is far-fetched on the face of it. But it is also clear that the FBI and Mossad both new about what was to come. The FBI’s warnings were ignored at the top – incompetence or malevolence, you tell me. But in either case it should be punished. So it may have been, as the pundits said in the early days, that this slaughter could not have been carried off without the aid of a nation state. There are only two that could have been in on this – Israel and the US itself. And it is now known that the fake 9/11 commission deleted from its report the fact that the single thing motivating the hijackers, who may have been little more than cats paws, was the plight of the Palestinians.

Remember the Maine. Remember the Tonkin Gulf incident. And some would say, Remember Pearl Harbor. PNAC itself said in 2000 that it would require a catastrophe of Pearl Harbor like dimensions to rev up the populace for wars in the Middle East. Looks like PNAC got lucky.

The Oklahoma City bombing does not merit a commemoration like this. Thsi kind of maudlin exercise requires American lives taken by an official enemy- in this case Muslim Arabs, a twofer.

If the Confucian idea that people or their children are punished for misdeeds and evil, we are in for a bad time. Let us hope that we can drive out those who are driving us in this terrible direction, like Bush and Obama and their friends in high places who run our nation, in good time to redeem ourselves and avoid that punishment.